Creation. Theology. Church.

Month: October 2017

“Faith – this means, naturally, that no person or church can live from the greatness of their own actions. They instead live solely from the great act that God himself does and has done. And (this is what is crucial) the great acts of God remain unseen and hidden in the world. Things in the church are simply not the way they are in the world and in the history of nations, where it is ultimately a question of being able to point to great deeds.

The church that tried to do that would have already long since fallen to the laws and powers of this world. The church of success has truly not been the church of faith for a long time. The act that God did in this world, and from which all the world has since lived, is the cross on Golgotha. Such are God’s “successes,” and the successes of the church and the individual are like that when they are acts of faith. That faith abides means that it remains true, that human beings must live from what is invisible, that they live not from their own visible work but from the invisible act of God…

And so it is with the Reformation church. It never lives from its deeds or from its acts of love. It instead lives from what it does not see and yet believes.”

‘The Acts of God, Hidden in the World’, I Want to Live these Days with You, 315 (DBW 13.400)

World Without End

Sporadic posts from a biblical scholar living and working in the Highlands of Scotland. Reflections on creation, theology, the Church, life as a Christian, and some other stuff too.